Calvin & Luther Blanchard Memorial Stone

The second of three memorials dedicated on Patriots’ Day in Acton in 1895, the Calvin and Luther Blanchard Memorial Stone was erected by Luke Blanchard to recognize the contributions that his grandfather, Calvin, and his grandfather’s brother, Luther, made to the fight for American independence.

Its dedication featured an address by Reverend W. R. Buxton, pastor of South Acton’s Congregational Church, and the reading of an historic paper by the Honorable Luther Conant. Two other memorials dedicated that day include the Joseph Robbins Home Site Memorial Stone and the Issac Davis Home Site Marker.

The Calvin & Luther Blanchard Memorial Stone can be found on Prospect Street, less than a tenth of a mile north of Spencer Road. It marks the former property of Deacon Jonathan Hosmer, to whom the Blanchard brothers were apprenticed when Acton’s militia and minute men received their call to arms on April 19, 1775.

While Calvin lived on to fight at the Battle of Bunker Hill weeks later, Luther—a fifer in Captain Isaac Davis’s company— was reportedly the first man shot at the Battle of Concord. He died after a prolonged struggle with complications stemming from those wounds.

The marker’s text reads:

FROM THIS FARM WENT
CALVIN AND LUTHER BLANCHARD
TO CONCORD FIGHT AND BUNKER HILL.
SONS OF SIMON BLANCHARD WHO WAS
KILLED AT THE BATTLE OF QUEBEC 1759.
LUTHER WAS THE FIRST MAN HIT BY A
BRITISH BALL AT THE OLD NORTH BRIDGE
AND DIED IN THE SERVICE OF HIS COUNTRY
A FEW MONTHS LATER.